


The Sacrifice

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: The Outer Rim [23]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, Heavy Angst, The Mandalorian (TV) Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28931928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Too late, Din begins to truly understand what the Armorer asked of him.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Series: The Outer Rim [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055645
Comments: 21
Kudos: 87





	The Sacrifice

The Armorer had been crueler than she knew. She had laid this quest upon him, never warning him of the true danger; never explaining that death was not the greatest sacrifice a Mandalorian could make.

Din wondered, later, if this was why the foundlings were raised together as a cohort. He had no father, no mother, after that terrible day, but he had been rescued, and the gratitude for it ran deep in his bones. He recalled through the mists of childhood the many shifting helmets, respected elders teaching him, training him, caring for him. For all of them. He remembered growing up among many other children, remembered the fondness, the camaraderie, the brotherhood. 

He knew those feelings, affection borne through creed, not blood; affection kept at a careful remove. He had learned after the day of smoke and ash to keep his feelings close at hand, for life was cold and unpredictable: saying goodbye became easier all the time. Bonds were a transient thing, fading with the Purge, the relocations, the empty years spent roaming. Goodbye was not a stranger. It was, perhaps, his closest friend. 

He knew how to do this, how to distance. He knew how to leave. _Goodbye_ was what he had expected when she laid this task upon him.

But goodbye between a clan of _two_ — that was something altogether different —

She hadn’t warned him. Her measured voice had carried no caution of the dangers he faced; no admonition to hunker down deep, deep, deep within himself. He had come in vulnerable from the start.

And he had _opened_. He had held Grogu in his arms, against his chest, on his shoulder, in his lap. He’d chuckled over the child and his antics, sighed when the little one finally fell to sleep; he’d ached to learn the child’s name, glowed with pride when the kid showed his powers just to please him. He’d felt hot tears in his scruff beneath his helmet, when he held a drowsy Grogu on his knee, when he tried to prepare for the severing --

* * *

When it came, it was not as he had feared, dreamed, dreaded.

There was his hand, decisive and steady on a beskar rim.

The hiss of the helmet’s release, cool air on his face.

Refusing to blink, for that would mean missing a moment of Grogu’s wondering expression, the tilt of his head, the soft fall of his ears. 

Din gazed into Grogu’s face, his heart seizing, frozen, full. Tears blurred his vision, but he did not mind; the child was so beautiful without the distance of the helmet. But then Grogu’s hand, raised and curious, stretched towards Din’s cheek --

Din closed his eyes. It was forbidden, wasn’t it, all of it forbidden, but _why_? Why, when there was such warmth against his skin, a gentle questing hand, a feeling so soft it made him smile through the blur? 

Why, when he’d never been so _happy_ \--

And then the realization, the killing blow, the _quest_.

The last shred of his honor as a Mandalorian.

He could not fail his foundling now. To leave Grogu’s gifts undeveloped, to take the choice away from him, would be a day of smoke and ash without the blood.

He gave his permission in a voice that shook, despite how hard he struggled to keep it even. He set Grogu down, every part of him crying out to take the child in his arms and flee, and he let him go.

_Until it is reunited with its own kind._

The mudhorn signet weighed heavy, so heavy. He buckled with it, crumbling beneath the signet of a clan of one, and he knew that death was not a greater evil than goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> BIG SADS FOR YOUR FRIDAY NIGHT ;______;


End file.
